Banff Musicians in Residence Concerts: House Program (Jan 2023)

Megumi Masaki is a pianist, multimedia performing artist, educator and curator. She is recognized as an innovator that reimagines the piano, pianist and performance space. Her work pushes boundaries of interactivity between sound, image, text and movement in multimedia works through new technologies, including hand-gesture-motion tracking to generate and control live-electronics and live-video, AI, 3D visuals, keyboard-controlled computer game, e-textile sensors and active infra-red tracking. As a Japanese-Canadian artist, her work also explores how human rights and environmental issues can intersect and be communicated through music. Over 70 compositions have been created with/for Megumi and she has premiered 150 works worldwide. Megumi was appointed to the Order of Manitoba and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
www.megumimasaki.com

A Juno-award winning artist, Shad is one of Canada’s most revered rappers, a peerless wordsmith who embodies Hip-Hop’s power to entertain, educate and express the fullness of humanity through art. Born in Kenya to Rwandan parents, and raised in London, Ontario, Shad has released 7 full-length albums and 3 EPs since his debut in 2005. 5 of his albums have been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, the most shortlisted nominations of any artist in the prize's history. Shad also hosted CBC's Arts and Culture radio show 'q', is the host of Netflix's Peabody and Emmy-Award winning docuseries 'Hip-Hop Evolution' and he holds a Masters Degree in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University. Using the power of words and music to make meaning, Shad draws on his own experiences to explore the fullness of life and what it means to be human.

Image by Justin Broadbent.

tUkU is a composer, singer, and performance artist, exploring the relationship between words and melody; voice as archive to sonically weave community. A Dora-nominated theatre composer and a poetic songwriter who excels at uniting text with complex harmonic songlines, tUkU honours the place singing takes in black woman culture. ‘I come to music through a powerful musical lineage, from the Bey family of artists, in Canada and the US, prominently rooted in jazz culture. ‘I have been singing with my mother and sister since I was a child.’  The recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, tUkU created a project titled diary of a salt. eater, to set to melody select poems from nayyirah waheed’s salt. for black woman chorus. In research into ways of being, tUkU recently participated in collective process work facilitated by philosopher/writer/activist Bayo Akomolafe.  tUkU is currently composing and recording her solo song set entitled luna’s re-. ‘More than anything, the experience of listening shapes my choices of expression as an artist and inspires my day-to-day movements as a human being.’  CATEGORY:WOMAN is tUkU’s debut as a film composer.

Born with a strong sense of rhythm, Jillian McKenna finds herself inside jazz, folk and alternative sounds. After studying jazz performance on the upright bass at the New School in New York City, Jill has worked this knowledge into her own sound, becoming a sought-after touring bassist.  She has gained international opportunities including NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, The Bern Jazz Festival (Switzerland) and Les Journées Musicales de Carthage (Tunisia). 

Always a cup of coffee in hand, Jill has realized her role as both artist and arts advocate. With a particular love of collaboration and improvisation, she prioritizes showing up for the music first and honouring the process. 

Jill is currently based out of Nelson, BC and is preparing to release her newest project as a multi-instrumentalist, under the artist name, Marivon, in early 2023. 

Taking its name from the awe-inspiring Rocky Mountains of Canada, Rockeys Duo is a unique collaboration between harpsichordist Katelyn Clark (Montréal, QC) and pianist Luciane Cardassi (Banff, AB). With the unexpected combination of piano, harpsichord and electronics, the duo explores keyboard instruments through performance, improvisation, and commissioning of new works. After meeting at the Banff Centre during several artist residencies, the duo gradually took shape through the performance of Louis Andriessen’s Dubblespoor. This successful collaboration instigated the duo’s projects of creating new
works for harpsichord, piano and electronics. Rockeys Duo has commissioned, premiered, and recorded works by Canadian composers Linda Catlin Smith, Jimmie LeBlanc, Anna Pidgorna, Isaiah Cecarelli, by Brazilian composer Antonio Celso Ribeiro and by German composer Annette Brosin.

Priyanka Chakrabarti, who performs under the moniker 'Piu', is a Vancouver based musician, composer, and producer. Born in Kolkata, Priyanka has been a lifelong student of Indian classical music (vocals and sitar). With a passion for exploratory electronic fusion and dance floor grooves, Priyanka's music moves effortlessly between hard hitting analog synth lines, hypnotic world beats, and ambient soundscapes tamed by her voice. Her debut album drops in Summer 2023.
 

Taiwanese-Canadian pianist Pei-Chen Chen has received numerous awards throughout North America and Asia as a pianist and piano educator. As an active performer, she has won awards at international ensemble competitions, including the North West International Piano Ensemble Competition and the United States International Duo Piano Competition. Pei-Chen is also passionate about promoting Taiwanese and Canadian piano music to younger generations. Recently she recorded Northern Lights Piano Duets: An Exploration of Canadian Piano Music. As a piano educator, Pei-Chen applies Dalcroze-inspired activities, connecting body movement to her teaching and research. She was awarded the Mitacs Globalink Research Award, the International Dalcroze Conference Best Student Paper, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship. Currently, Pei-Chen is the Teacher Trainer in the Piano Pedagogy Program at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto (U of T), an RCM Practical Examiner, and the co-founder and co-director of MUSIC INSIDEOUT, a music school in Toronto. Pei-Chen received her Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at U of T under the tutelage of Dr. Midori Koga and Dr. James Parker.
 

Christine Choi began her professional career at the age of 14 when she became a member of the first violin section in the Regina Symphony Orchestra. She completed an Advanced Certificate in Music Performance at the University of Toronto where she studied violin with Scott St. John and Lorand Fenyves, and chamber music with William Aide, Patricia Parr and Terrence Helmer.  As a chamber musician, she has participated in numerous festivals across North America, including the Scotia Festival of Music, the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, the Toronto Summer Music Festival, the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford University, and the Colorado Springs Music Festival, where she was a winner of the concerto competition. In Vancouver, she has performed with the Vancouver Chamber Players and as a member of the Arbutus String Quartet.  She has been studying with violinist Tasmin Little since 2020.

Christine graduated with a medical degree from the University of Toronto in 2004, and completed her residency in Emergency Medicine in 2009.  She is currently an emergency physician based in Vancouver.  

The 2022 winner of Music NB's "Innovator of the Year" award, Martin Daigle is an interdisciplinary performer, composer, researcher, and producer from New, Brunswick, Canada. Flourishing from creative foundations as a drummer and percussionist, his diverse work as a performer, composer, and researcher pushes the boundaries between audio-visual and elctro-acoustic art. Martin's innovative approach to percussion music utilizes electronic devices; notably, ongoing research in the development of an "augmented drum kit," which combines acoustic drum sounds, digital samples and visual manipulations for a truly unique result. 

Well versed as a performer and studio artist, Martin's artistry spans many genres including rock, jazz, and classical percussion and has appeared in festivals including Open Ears, Halifax Jazz Festival, Acadie Rock, and many more. 

Martin's research is currently focused on drumming balance, drum kit timbre, and orchestration, and the development of haptic-enhanced drum educational tools. These projects seek to increase educational accessibility and reduce drum-related injuries. This work has been published in HAID20 and presented at the CIRMMT-OICRM-BRAMS Student Symposium, ACTOR project's yearly conference, and various universities in North America and in Europe. Martin has pursued artistic research at the Banff Centre, CIRMMT, and McGill University. In 2021, he released a debut solo album entitled "Mossy Cobblestone." "Drum Machines," a much-anticipated new album further innovating technological applications is set for release in 2023.

Lauren is an innovative, multidisciplinary performing artist based in Montreal, Canada. She is a classically trained violinist playing regularly with the Montreal Symphony and the National Arts Centre Orchestras, an electronic-acoustic music creator, a writer, storyteller and comedian.

She received her ARCT diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music at age 18; and her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music Performance from the Indiana University and McGill University schools of music respectively.

In 2017, Lauren expanded from the classical music world into the realms of improv, stand-up and sketch comedy, storytelling, and electronic-acoustic music. Her greatest passion is creating live shows and multi-media experiences that combine all of the above art forms. 

In 2018 she was the musical director for “Riot: Theatre Improvised, Improv Theater-ised,” in which she performed structured improvised music on violin with collaborative pianist Eliazer Kramer for a completely improvised dramatic play. She co-produced and created “The Score,” a recurring show for the Montreal Improv Theatre’s 2018-2019 season where she performed sketch comedy and both improvisational and classical violin in collaboration with long-form improv comedy. 

In 2019, she co-produced and created “Under the Sheets” which debuted at St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival. She and electronic musician Pat McMaster told autobiographical stories based on traumatic events from their childhoods, and then translated them into live improvised electronic-acoustic music.

Lauren is currently working on “You’re Not Alone,” a solo electronic-acoustic music and storytelling show revolving around the theme of connection. She is grateful to have received funding from the Canada Arts Council.

Niña Dioz began her career in Monterrey, Mexico at age 17 when an old woman in a coffee shop randomly nicknamed her “female Baby Jesus”, saying she looked like the baby Jesus. Shortly after, accompanied by extravagant Latin rhythms and a unique style of delivering her lyrics, she became one of the most exciting artists on the Latin-American urban scene. That earned her the respect of her colleagues, collaborating and sharing the stage with renowned international artists such as Bomba Estéreo, Lido Pimienta, M.I.A, Anderson Paak, Plastilina Mosh, Toy Selectah, etc.

In 2019, her first single “Tambalea” released by Nacional Records, which includes Ceci Bastida and Lido Pimienta on the empowering anthem, dedicated to women and marginalized people everywhere in the era of the #MeToo movement and Donald Trump, reached more than 2 million streams. Germany's Cosmo Radio named it the song of the year 2019. The album, “Reyna”, received much love from media, radio and digital platforms, NPR, The Fader, Spotify, Los Angeles
Magazine, KUTX, y KEXP among others, she was also selected as Billboard’s Latin Artist on the Rise: Niña Dioz’s purpose in music is to inspire others to be themselves no matter what color, race, or religion they are. “Coming out as the first openly gay rapper in Mexico, in such a machista society, is something
that makes me proud” Niña Dioz told Billboard.

Her most recent single, "Mezcal", which has clocked over 2 million views on Youtube, is a powerful collaboration between two of Mexico's biggest femcees, Niña Dioz and Hispana. Niña Dioz says: "For me, Mezcal represents the Mexican woman, powerful and full of fire.” In 2022, Niña Dioz was touring with her new album “Amor, Locura & Otros Vicios” having shows presented in Mexico City, Atlanta, San Francisco, Madrid, Barcelona,
Zaragoza, and at The Broad museum in Los Angeles. Angeles, California. 

With early ties to the American Southwest and Canada's Pacific coast, Hannah Epperson first heard music and stories as a traveler between high mountain desert and ocean shores. Her music draws from a life of listening and playing inspired by artists across a wide range of genres: from a mentorship with cowgirl Meghan Merker, a clutch of old time musicians, and Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theater, to practicing arpeggios, discovering discographies of European artists like Bjork, the Cranberries, Arvo Part and others who captured the imagination of a young North American.

Hannah discovered her joy in collaborating with others early. Recently, that includes working in dialogue with the intense physicality of contemporary dancers in Brooklyn, New York and Banff, Alberta. She has worked in studio and on stage with artists such as Fleet Foxes, Ry X and Julianna Barwick and Canadian spoken word artist Shane Koyczan.

With violin, loop pedal, voice and innovative rhythmic improvisations with proximate objects, she weaves uncanny connections with her audiences. As a companion in musical experience, she is powerful yet playful and gentle, often exploring the essential cultural and political matters of our age without ever leaving the miracle of the commonplace behind.

Duane Forrest is a professional singer-songwriter and multimedia artist from Toronto, Ontario.

His unique sound blends jazz, reggae, bossa nova, soul, and smooth vocals. Over the past decade, he has released multiple albums and toured across Canada, Europe and Central America. He has secured radio play in Canada, Germany, Honduras, Iceland, Italy, Nicaragua, and the United States. His last album, The Climb, reaches more than 4,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

Duane has created a play called “CLIMB” based on the album. He presented it at the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival, where Toronto Fringe founder Gregory Nixon described the show as “one of the highlights of this year’s Fringe.” Since then, CLIMB has been performed in various formats at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019 and 2022.

Duane recently released his new EP “Blackest Bird” which speaks to political issues facing his community. He is excited to use music and theatre to dive deeper into issues of social justice and change.

His experience with music as a young man also inspired him to found Genesis School of the Arts, a registered Canadian charity that offers music and arts programming to marginalized children and youth in Toronto and Central America.
 

Sarah McCabe (she/her) is a songwriter, singer, and multi-instrumentalist performer. As the lead songwriter and performer of HENDRA, Sarah blends her training as a classical violist with her experience as an improviser and performance artist. HENDRA’s first album, Adulthood, will be released in March 2023, and has been generously sponsored by a grant from the Canada Council for The Arts. Adulthood is inspired by Sarah’s experiences with mental illness and undiagnosed ADHD/Dyspraxia. It blends viola-led folk-pop songs with experimental electronics to tell a relatable, funny, and moving story about new diagnoses and living with mental illness. 

Sarah is a PhD candidate at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, on the Barbican-Guildhall Studentship, and is researching Queer open mics. She currently lives in London UK, in a house full of a rotating cast of artistic creatives. Her hobbies include Dungeons & Dragons, crafting, and making stop motion music videos. She has two unofficial cats named Gizmo and Fudge. 

Liam Elliot is a Canadian composer and sound artist from Calgary, AB currently living in Princeton, NJ. His work seeks to create a sense of place and reflects a fascination with the sounds and processes of the natural world. Through his music and sound installations, Liam encourages audiences to listen in new ways to the world around them. He creates acoustic and electroacoustic pieces for concert performance and builds sound sculptures that directly transform natural processes into musical sound. As an improvisor, he builds physical and digital instruments to sample and shape the sounds of his collaborators.

Liam is a PhD candidate in composition at Princeton University. He completed a Bachelor of Music in Composition at Acadia University and an MPhil in Music Studies at the University of Cambridge. His work has been performed across Canada, and in the US, the UK, Germany, and Bulgaria by musicians including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Sō Percussion, Latitude 49, Arx Duo, Bergamot Quartet, Aizuri Quartet, Dither Quartet, Steve Schick, and Ellen Fullman. His sound sculptures have been installed in outdoor locations across Canada, as well as in galleries in London and Berlin. To learn more about his work, please visit liamelliotmusic.com.
 

Sebastian Hutchings is a fourth-generation Banffite, the great grandchild of acclaimed photographer Byron Harmon. Holding a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, Hutchings' art practice is an eclectic mix of media interplay, including works in visual art, writing, music composition, and sculptural wood working, often woven together to create embodied narrative experiences. As a music composer, Hutchings intuitively employs compositional devices to the end of creating emotional expressions or narratives, often freely mixing styles, genres, or structural devices to achieve the desired musical landscape. Hutchings has written and selfproduced operatic works and song cycles across Canada, including The Agony of Mrs. Stone (Banff 2009), Did we escape, I wonder… (Montreal 2011, Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival 2012), and Fury (Banff 2014, Fredericton 2018). Their installation work Reliquary + Nocturne for Norma was included in the group exhibition Large and In Charge (Whyte Museum 2018), and their score for the short film Do we leave this here was nominated for a Rosie Award (2018).

Federico Isasti is a drummer, composer, improviser and software developer from Buenos Aires. Studied classical percussion, holds a degree in jazz drums from Manuel de Falla conservatory and attended the Expanded Music program at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM, Argentina). He participated in workshops in Italy and USA and artistic residencies in Canadá (Banff Centre) and Switzerland (Lyseloth Residency). He has released over 20 albums of original music with musicians from Latin America, Europe and North America and won awards with La Disidencia de las Máquinas and Sales de Baño. His work includes compositions for different acoustic ensembles, electronic music for dance pieces and short films. In 2023 he won the Second Prize in the National Music Competition (FNA, Argentina) for the piece Boruro, featuring his trio La Disidencia de las Máquinas with live electronics. He currently focus’ his work in composing for acoustic ensembles with electronic audio processing. He leads La Disidencia de las Máquinas, Lo Bueno no es de Nadie (drums, electronics and recited texts solo set), co-leads NUDO (piano and drums duo) and performs in several other groups.

Federico Isasti was generously supported by the Raul Urtasun/Frances Harley Argentina Artists Scholarship.

Kalaisan Kalaichelvan is a composer and pianist based in Toronto, Canada. His compositional practice spans multiple disciplines, drawing from film, dance, theatre, installation and deals with themes of translation and transference. 

Named by Ludwig Van as one of “six emerging Canadian composers to keep an eye on”, his music has been performed and premiered by renowned ensembles such as Pro Coro Canada, the Dior Quartet and Duo Concertante. Kalaisan is a 2021 Fellow of the Sundance Composers lab and is one of the awarded grantees of the Sundance Institute’s Art of Practice Fellowship. He has held residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and was an alumna of the Canadian Film Centre as one of the 2021 Slaight Music residents.  He was also recently awarded the Creativity Connection Fellowship with Toronto Metropolitan University and was one of the six composers commissioned by the Canadian League of Composers to write for Pro Coro Canada under their PIVOT program.  In 2022, Kalaisan has scored feature films that have premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (“This Place”) and the Fantasia Film Festival (“The Protector”).

Kalaisan’s music is defined by its genre-bending boldness, its refined classicism and musical ingenuity. Having worked across various disciplines and communities of thought, Kalaisan seeks to bring together incongruous institutions to build novel structures that reflect his artistic upbringing.
 

Jonathan Kawchuk is an award-winning composer from Canada. He has scored the feature films, Memento Mori (National Film Board of Canada), Clara (Serendipity Point Films), for which he won a 2022 Socan Award (Achievement in Feature Film Music Awards), and Carbon: The Unauthorized Biography (Graphene Productions).

As a technician, he worked on albums for Nico Muhly and Ben Frost, and as an assistant sound tech for the Philip Glass Ensemble on Music in 12 Parts, in London. He is an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Slaight Family Music Residency, the Banff Centre for the Arts Musicians in Residence program, the Berlinale Talents Lab, and is a voting member of the Recording Academy (Grammy Awards).

Kawchuk is also signed to Paper Bag Records as a recording artist with two studio albums under his belt; North (2018) and Everywhen (2022). Kawchuk studied at multiple institutions and completed his Bachelor of Music, Honours, First Class, at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. In addition to his formal education, he has held a recording internship in Iceland, learned gamelan in Indonesia, and studied wildlife field recording in England under Chris Watson (Frozen Planet, Nova). He is represented by Evolution Music Partners. Jonathan is currently the Canadian representative for the acoustic conservation society Quiet Parks International.

Toronto songwriter Abigail Lapell returns with Stolen Time, her elemental and powerfully evocative third album. Produced by Howard Bilerman (Leonard Cohen, U.S. Girls) at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango, Stolen Time feels unhurried, psychedelic and otherworldly in the vein of Gillian Welch or Karen Dalton. An eclectic cast of musicians – including Fats Kaplin (John Prine, Beck), Christine Bougie (Bahamas, Gretchen Peters), Dani Nash (Andy Shauf, Sarah Harmer), and Dan Fortin (John Southworth, Serena Ryder) - underscores the power of Lapell’s vocals on live-off-the-floor, 70s folk rock arrangements featuring bass, drums, horns, strings and steel. But many of the album's standout tracks are solo guitar or piano songs, backed by little more than ghostly accordion or harmonica. The result is Lapell’s most ambitious and confident album to date, which has earned praise from Rolling Stone, Brooklyn Vegan, Flood, Exclaim! and No Depression.

Over the past five years and two spellbinding releases, Lapell has garnered two Canadian Folk Music Awards (English Songwriter of the Year in 2020 and Contemporary Album of the Year in 2017) and a staggering 20 million+ Spotify streams while touring widely across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Stolen Time was released April 2022 on Outside Music.

Emi Lebel (éemi)
main vox, guitar, vocal pedal 

Marie-Clo Sarault (Marie-Clo)
main vox, Micro Korg, vocal pedal

Beau Nectar is a collaboration between two bilingual singer-songwriters separated by kilometers of forests, rivers, mountains and prairies. Marie-Clo, Franco-Ontarian, and éemi, Fransaskoise deliver intimate, vibrant and surreal synth pop with eco-feminist lyrics that spark their fans' empathy towards nature. Their upcoming release Two Lips came to fruition with the support of MusicAction, CAC, OAC, OMIC and the Conseil culturel fransaskois. Beau Nectar personifies flora and fauna, draws inspiration from modern science, and showcases co-evolution; their friendship.

Composer and sound artist MAYSUN uses his drumming background combined with synthesizers and sound design to create immersive soundscapes. With an emphasis on the use of physical space to alter sounds, his compositions are created as soundtracks to life events. MAYSUN has played at MUTEK Montreal (2021), had a full-dome performance in Montreal’s Satosphère (2022) and was featured in Modern Drummer Magazine (July 2022). Recent releases include works such as Variations on Clarity and Conviction (2022), Wanderlust II (2022), Waiting Spaces (2020), and more than 700 improvisational pieces between 2017 and today.
 

Anoush Moazzeni is a concert pianist, interdisciplinary composer, artist-researcher, new media artist, music technologist, Ph.D Candidate and part-time faculty at Concordia University. She identifies as a worker in intensities, frequencies, chaos, and rhythm. As a performer-maker and thinker, she engages with bodies and materials that are suffused with ethical, vital and political power. Moazzeni is interested in feeling, doing, and thinking through intersensory and multidimensional engagements with material and immaterial flows to create aesthetic and static forms that allow for provoking meaning/visuality and opening up to intra-actions with matter and “otherly” expressive forces. Hence her semiotic expression takes different shapes depending on the thresholds of her engagement with other assemblages, but her expressions circulate somewhere beyond the media and in-between senses, and on the logics of perception and desire.

The development of Anoush Moazzeni’s art incorporates interaction between artistic interpretation, scholarly reflection, (and community work); particular areas of her interest include cultural analysis, visual/interdisciplinary poetics, experimental philosophy, research-creation, transdisciplinary composition and performance. In these areas of practice, she conducts her works to investigate on non-canonic, experiential and artistic forms of knowledge production, political, epistemic and aesthetic dimensions of the human-machine relationship, issues of representation and subjectivation, critical policy analysis, aesthetics(as Politics), decolonial projects and aestheSis, new strategies for hybrid and interdisciplinary performance design, soundscape ecology, mixed music composition, extended techniques and unconventional instrumental performance practice, interactive musical technologies, interface design, robotics and the artificial intelligence. Where her works are engaged with new technologies, Moazzeni explores the ways in which the human-machine relations in arts/music entail new modes of knowing, being and experiencing the world and she tries to shed light on the ethical, epistemological and ontological issues that arise from and are implicit to techno-scientifically driven arts.

Anoush Moazzeni enjoys a performing career that has, frequently, taken her around the world. She has performed at various festivals, venues, museums and conferences in Americas, Europe, and West & East Asia. She has been commissioned as artist, composer and lecturer-performer by arts & human rights institutions and organizations such as the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto(AKM), the Fine Arts Museum in Quebec City(MNBAQ), Museum of Civilisation in Quebec City, the 2nd International Art and Human Rights Symposium in Ottawa and the Canadian Music Center(CMC) in recent years. Moazzeni has been constantly engaged in the organization of cultural mediation & educational programs and community works, aiming at facilitating the access and brining back to the table minority perspectives on sociality, spirituality and the arts, in collaboration with marginalized and/or at-risk communities with the support of institutions such as Vidéographe, Feminist Media Studio, LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE and others. Anoush Moazzeni has premiered more than 80 pieces for piano solo and collaborative piano from contemporary composers around the world under call for scores and commissions and she has been awarded as the winner of multiple competitions and scholarships in Canada, France and Iran.
 

Alexis Normand’s jazz-folk music in French has been recognized across the Canada to critical acclaim. Named Francophone Artist of the Year by the Western Canadian Music Awards, her list of nominations also includes the Canadian Folk Music Awards and the Lieutenant Governor’s Arts Award in her home province of
Saskatchewan.

In 2016, she put her solo career on hold to make her side project with Rosie & the Riveters a full-time endeavor. They toured internationally and recorded 3 albums – the most recent of which was released in 2018. Ms. Behave peaked at #3 on Canada’s CBC Radio 2 Top 20 and was featured in publications such as Billboard Magazine and Rolling Stone.

Before the band dissolved in 2020, their music was used in television shows and commercials, most notably for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and CBC’s Workin’ Moms. In 2023, Alexis will release Mementos – a bilingual and deeply personal record that dives into her francophone experience living in a minority-language context. Produced by James Bunton (Donovan Woods, Celeigh Cardinal), the album marks her long-awaited return as a solo artist, one brimming with warmth and vulnerability.

Québec native Myriam Parent has been living and making music in BC since 2007. The Victoria-based multi instrumentalist (piano, voice, ukulele) has her roots in classical piano as well as French traditionnal a cappella music. Incidentally, her latest body of work, released in the Fall of 2019 under the project name Withbloom, is a full-lenght album of original acappella music.

The bilingual artist draws inspiration from the natural world, as well the human spiritual world. As a dharma practicitoner, the contemtporary folk musician often bases her songwriting on buddhist teachings. As a reponse to the isolation created by the pandemic restrictions, Myriam Parent has been thrilled to start exploring new musical mediums, such as loop stations, octave pedals and keyboards, in order to access a big soundscape without the help of other musicians.

She is delighted to come to Banff for the first time and seek inspiration and collaboration opportunities amongst her peers and mentors, as well as bathe in awe of the National Park's beauty.

Benjamin Portzen [he / him] is a composer, improviser, and movement artist who strives to make space for connection, healing, presence, and absence through immersive sound and movement works. By commingling practices of premeditation and spontaneity, Ben offers the opportunity for performers and witnesses to create and interrogate relationships between bodies, ideas, sounds, and objects in real-time. At present, Ben’s research interests include designing intelligent computer collaborators for composition and improvisation, illuminating the body as the locus of creative potential in the creation of sound works, the facilitation of “real” experiences for performers and audiences, and the ways in which artistic practice offers the opportunity for radical self-transformation and -dissolution.

Ben holds a Bachelor’s of Music from Lawrence University (‘21) where he studied composition with Asha Srinivasan and Joanne Metcalf, piano with Anthony Padilla, improvisation with Matt Turner, and dance with Margaret Paek. As a 2021 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Ben will spend one year across Japan, Nepal, Belgium, Germany, and Iceland exploring the role art can play in imagining and building a more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate future by embracing our unknowns with more fascination than fear.

Formed by Aaron Collis and Mark Manning, Rum Ragged takes a bold approach to the distinct folk music of their home, the Eastern Canadian Island of Newfoundland. Boasting bouzouki, fiddle, bodhran, banjo, guitar and button accordion, these new champions of East Coast music enliven and enlighten audiences with both songs and tune sets which they deliver with an honest swagger that is far beyond their years. 2021 Juno Award nominees, ECMA nominees, Canadian Folk Music Award nominees and MusicNL winners, this group has only begun to scratch the surface of what they have in store for their music. With a reverence for their roots and a creative, contemporary edge, this young band have quickly become known as the finest purveyors of their great living musical tradition. Rum Ragged is not your run-of-the-mill folk band, they are the genuine article.

Vox Rea supplies a soundtrack to the confusion and euphoria of coming of age in a postmodern world. With a sound as impulsive and fluctuating as the life of the 20-somethings they are, their special brand of noir pop blends string arrangements and harmonies into the dreamy collection of songs on their self-titled debut.

Citing influences that range from Florence and the Machine to Friedrich Nietzsche, the band draws inspiration from a mix of nostalgia for times past and life in a modern day world in turmoil. Fascinated by the contradictions inherent in the human experience, their music is a celebration of free will and an ode to the paralyzing nature of choice. It is both the intoxicating night roaming and the guilty morning after, a revelry in excess and an exercise in solemn self-reflection. Vox Rea chronicles the odyssey of a group of  artists trying to come to terms with their generation’s place in the human story. Themes of addiction, self-doubt, lust, identity, independence and grief form the undercurrent of lyrics that are deeply introspective. Hell bent on creating a meaningful life amidst the siren songs of consumerism and efficiency, Vox Rea wonders what it really means to be free. 
 

Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kate Weekes maps the musical spot where landscapes and emotions converge via accessible jazzy folk/pop inspired by the planet’s northernmost locales. Weekes has created a dazzling sonic scrapbook of experiences buoyed by her inimitable performance style.  

Now based in Chelsea, Quebec after nearly a decade spent immersed in the Yukon’s vibrant music scene, Weekes draws on an astonishing array of experiences including dog mushing-for-hire in Norway, touring China with a swing band, canoeing from Whitehorse to Dawson City and, notably, several intense personal relationships to write her by turns mournful and joyous songs.
That unique backstory explains why a one-genre description simply cannot capture Weekes’ musical scope. It’s more like: eclectic, lyrical, vocally propelled folk/pop with subtle jazz underpinnings buoyed by everything from organ to flugelhorn to trumpet. Indeed, you might say Kate Weekes’ music is the ultimate sonic scrapbook of a bold life lived to the fullest.

Kate has released 3 albums of original material and is currently completing her newest body of work, for release in 2022.

In 2001, John Wort Hannam quit his grade 9 teaching job to spend 10 months depleting his savings while sitting at his kitchen table, writing his first ten songs. Those songs would become his first recording Pocket Full Of Holes, released in 2002.

Twenty years later, the Alberta folk-roots musician has released eight full-length recordings and has a few feathers in his hat that include a JUNO nomination, a Canadian Folk Music Award for Album of the Year, a Kerrville Texas New Folk win, and numerous Western Canadian Music Award and Canadian Folk Music Award nominations.

John’s most recent recording, “Long Haul”, was recorded during the COVID lockdown. In the early days of the pandemic, random ideas began to coalesce. Those ideas became melodies and lyrics, and eleven songs later, a unified collection emerged. With narratives that trace small victories earned through hope, resilience and humour, the songs on ‘Long Haul’ reaches beyond the sense of isolation we all felt, and shares a sense of gratitude for what we have, and grief for what we lost.

www.johnworthannam.com

Banff Centre Production Staff: 

Blair Atkinson - Audio and Video Technician 
Brendan Briceland - Head of Projection Technology and Running Crew
John Brigham - Audio and Video Technician
Curtis Doherty - Interim Studio and Video Technician
Ben Ewing - Senior Recording Engineer 
Lyle Fish - Head of Sound
Matt Flawn - Head of Lighting
Samantha Hindle - Technical Director
Jozef Karoly - Video Post Production
Carey Lees – Wardrobe Shops Facilitator
Johnathan Limbrick – Omni-Technician and FOH Sound Engineer
Woody MacPhail - Senior Technical Producer 
Dave Miller – Stage Carpenter
Henry Ng - Audio and Music Technician 
Albert Picknell - Head Piano Technician 
Donna Sharpe – Final Tuning Program Stage Manager
Darrell Shaw - Assistant Head of Lighting
Pete Szakony – Omni-Technician and Running Crew
Raj Rathore - Assistant Head Stage Carpenter 
Brett Rayner - Head Stage Carpenter
Nerida Ross - Production Coordinator
Rita Taylor – Photographer 
Raffi Tchalikian - Audio and Video Technician
Mark Tierney - File Encoding 
Elena Vandakurova –Wardrobe Shops Facilitator